Refugee flood reveals human cost of South Waziristan's invisible war

A family from South Waziristan flee the battle zone to Dera Ismail Khan. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

The war in South Waziristan started early for Ghufran. As Pakistani warplanes pounded the Taliban stronghold of Ladha last week, in preparation for the ground offensive now under way, the 11-year-old boy and his family scrambled to safety across a range of jagged mountains.

They left behind a broken home, destroyed by the air force, but also something much more precious. Ghufran said his father stayed on to guard the family's worldly wealth: four goats, three sheep and a donkey. "I miss him already. I wish he came with us," the schoolboy said, a shadow falling across his face.

As fighting raged for a third day in South Waziristan todayrefugees flooded into Dera Ismail Khan, a dusty, danger-laced town on the southern edge of the tribal area. Aid workers there said they had registered about 160,000 people in six centres; they expect the figure to jump by at least 100,000 in the coming weeks.

People crowded into government registration centres, putting their names down for an aid distribution programme that had yet to begin. Expressing frustration, many said they felt trapped between American drone strikes, ruthless Taliban fighters, and an invading Pakistani force that threatened their property and lives.

Many gave accounts of indiscriminate shelling and warplane attacks that contrast with the military's insistence that its forces are taking care to avoid civilian casualties. Kasheed Khan said he carried his 90-year-old mother during a two-day journey out of Makeen, one of the main Taliban hubs. "They were targeting the civilians. I saw it myself. They were hitting vehicles and houses," he said. "They even demolished the main bus stand in Makeen." Now, he said, he was staying in a relative's house along with 50 other people.

"Not a single Taliban has been targeted. It's only the civilians who have been hit," said Marjan, a man with a henna-tinged beard from Tiarza Narai. But when he criticised the Taliban another man sidled alongside him and chastised him for speaking against the Taliban, sparking a row that almost came to blows.

The truth is hard to pin down in South Waziristan, where a bloody war is unfolding behind an invisible veil. Since the ground operation began last Saturday, pitting 30,000 government soldiers against an estimated 10,000 Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, the area has been entirely cut off from the outside world. Phone lines are cut and it is impossible for journalists, foreign or local, to enter the battlezone.

Yet the broad strokes of the assault are clear. The army is punching into the territory of the Mehsud tribe, a natural fortress that has frustrated invaders for centuries, from three sides. Having captured several strategic heights, ground troops are fighting their way in from the periphery, while warplanes are bombing Taliban positions in the mountain redoubt at the centre of the area. The assault followed two weeks of militant attacks across Pakistan in which more than 175 people died and included a 22-hour siege of army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

The army spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, said 68 militants and nine soldiers had died since Saturday; the Taliban said many more soldiers were killed than reported.

Those fleeing the fighting are entering Dera Ismail Khan, a tense town beside the Indus river, an hour's drive south of the tribal area. The town has its own history of violence: for years Sunni and Shia sectarian extremists have attacked each other in mosques, bazaars and at funerals. Earlier this year motorcycles were banned from the city to prevent hit squads from carrying out drive-by shootings.

The influx of displaced people has renewed anxieties. This afternoon heavily armed anti-terrorist police patrolled the streets wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "No Fear". Shortly after, a burst of gunfire rang through the streets, warning shots fired by soldiers aboard a military convoy who, fearing a suicide attack, warned townspeople to keep back. Security forces have also arrested dozens of sectarian extremists, many of whom have links to the Taliban.

"It's a huge blow to the militants, who are mostly drawn from these sectarian groups," said Faiysal Ali Khan, head of Fida, which is spearheading the government's relief programme.

One official told the Guardian that military intelligence had picked up a Taliban sympathiser charged with funnelling funds to the militants from the Gulf states, where many Mehsud work as migrant labourers, last night.

Yet not all the gunmen were gone. At a petrol station in the town a gang of men with long hair and automatic weapons, many of them resembling Taliban fighters, hung out of the back of a gleaming new pick-up truck. Locals said they belonged to the Abdullah Mehsud group, a government-sponsored faction of the Mehsud tribe. Their leader, Zainuddin, was killed by a Taliban assassin earlier this year; now his brother Misbahuddin has taken over.

Although Dera Ismail Khan is groaning with war-displaced families, the government has yet to start distributing aid. An argument is brewing about whether the displaced should be housed in organised camps. Provincial officials says they will never accept living in tents, but aid workers warn the town's ability to absorb refugees is close to straining point.

"Where will they go? They can't just roam around," said one aid official.

Some displaced people said they felt like pawns in a game – a perception partly born of the area's historical role as a playground of empires. It is also a product of the popular cocktail of conspiracy theories that do the rounds in Pakistan about Indian, Iranian, Chinese and even American support for the Taliban.

In Islamabad General David Petraeus, the US central command chief, met the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, and the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. Washington is reportedly unhappy with a deal Pakistan's military has struck with other Taliban who are attacking western troops in Afghanistan.

"Sometimes you have to talk to the devil," an army spokesman told reporters in explanation.

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